CASE STUDY
Building a Multi-Channel Strategy for a Higher Ed Training Provider
CHALLENGE
The Constructive Dialogue Institute (CDI) is a nationally recognized provider of campus culture transformation tools, including its flagship dialogue training program, Perspectives. As part of their work, CDI produces rigorous research on topics related to dialogue, conflict, and campus culture.
CDI had activated multiple owned and paid marketing channels to reach leaders at higher education institutions. The organization needed not only consistent execution across those channels but also a cohesive strategy for leveraging them, one that coordinated with the needs of the sales team and with the outputs of the research team.
SOLUTION
August 2024 - April 2026
Mariner11 helped CDI develop a multi-channel marketing strategy that met higher ed leaders where they were, whether on owned or paid channels. In collaboration with stakeholders across CDI, we created resources tailored to higher ed leaders’ evolving needs and guided them from initial awareness to active engagement.
✔ Content Marketing
Developed and implemented a strategic content marketing program that would leverage long-form content pieces into growth engines for email, LinkedIn, and sales. Developed a Campus Culture Scorecard as well as Fall and Spring Planning Toolkits that became some of CDI’s highest-converting content pieces.
✔ Social Media
Actively managed LinkedIn business page, creating regular text and graphic content. Our work tripled followers and grew monthly content impressions by nearly 20x.
✔ Paid Media
Developed and implemented a new strategy to increase awareness through Google Ads. Launched LinkedIn ads as a lead generation path for training programs.
✔ Email Marketing
Nurtured two key audience segments through monthly emails, turning email into a consistent, high-engagement channel with 42% open rates and 10% click-through rates. Promoted key research pieces and webinars with email sequences. Analyzed contacts to identify promising new segments for outreach.
✔ Website Content
Provided restructuring recommendations and wrote copy for key existing pages. Conceptualized, structured, and wrote the copy for two landing pages with 25%+ conversion rates.
RESULTS
300+
Pieces of content created across social media, newsletters, blog posts, press releases, and more.
23%
Increase in web traffic YoY
11%
Monthly email newsletter click-through rate (benchmark: 3.3%)
27%
Conversion rate on Fall and Spring Planning Toolkits, custom lead-generating content pieces (benchmark: 13%)
3.7X
Increase in LinkedIn business page followers
38X
Increase in monthly impressions on LinkedIn business page content